# Inter Governmental Committee - April 13, 2010 > Auto-transcribed civic record · April 13, 2010 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/1331 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/1331?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2010-04-13 - **Last revised**: July 17, 2026 - **Length**: 14,946 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Inter-Governmental Committee met on April 13, 2010, at 1:00 p.m., with Madam Chair presiding. The committee addressed four agenda items during the meeting, all of which received approval. The body took three motions to a vote and heard five public comments from members of the public. The approved agenda items included a review of Legal Bills Review Services, a discussion of Exit Interviews, consideration of Purchasing, Procurement & Professional Services matters, and an Update on Committee Items. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the meeting on April 13, 2010: * James * Crosbie * Myers * Gray * Blues * Beard * Henson * Feigel * Lawless * Martin No absences or late arrivals were recorded. ## Votes and Decisions **Motion to Create Work Group on Purchases, Procurement, and Professional Services Contracts** [timestamp: 00:05:17] A motion by Crosbie to create a work group to examine purchases, procurement, and professional services contracts passed by voice vote. The motion was supported by Crosbie, Myers, Gray, Blues, Beard, Henson, Feigel, Lawless, and Martin, with no votes against and no abstentions. **Motion to Restore Item N to Full Council as New Business Item** [timestamp: 00:51:29] A motion by Blues to restore item N to the full council as a new business item passed by voice vote. Nine members voted in favor: Blues, Crosbie, Myers, Gray, Beard, Henson, Feigel, Lawless, and Martin. One member, Revered, voted against the motion. There were no abstentions. **Motion to Create Work Group on Exit Interview Policy and Related Surveys** [timestamp: 01:33:28] A motion by Myers to create a work group to advance exit interview policy and related surveys passed by voice vote. The motion was supported by Myers, Crosbie, Gray, Blues, Beard, Henson, Feigel, Lawless, and Martin, with no votes against and no abstentions. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting addressed one contract matter related to legal services. **Legal Bill Review Services** The body considered legal bill review services under RFP 36-2009. Wayne Basconi, Attorney at Law, was identified as the vendor for this contract. No specific dollar amount was provided in the meeting materials for this service agreement. ## Public Comment Several speakers addressed concerns about legal services and employee retention during the public comment period. **Legal Bill Review Services** Beard raised concerns about layers of bureaucracy and the lack of in-house expertise, questioning the need for an external reviewer when internal staff could handle the task [timestamp: 00:23:20]. Crosbie expressed concern about the three-year contract with a specialized attorney, questioning the need for long-term commitment and suggesting a line-item budget approach instead [timestamp: 00:30:31]. **Exit Interviews and Employee Turnover** Lawless supported the implementation of exit interviews and suggested using free online tools like SurveyMonkey to collect anonymous feedback from employees [timestamp: 01:14:47]. Henson highlighted the high turnover in community corrections and E911, emphasizing the need to understand root causes to reduce costs and improve retention [timestamp: 01:18:14]. Blues asked about participation rates and whether exit interviews could be made a condition of employment, suggesting tying them to final payouts [timestamp: 01:20:25]. ## Contested Items **Three-Year Contract for Legal Bill Review** Council members debated a proposed three-year contract for specialized legal bill review services. The disagreement centered on multiple concerns: the cost of the long-term commitment, whether the specialized attorney's expertise matched the council's actual needs, and the lack of in-house capacity to perform this function internally. Despite the opposition raised during discussion, the motion passed by voice vote. **Exit Interview Policy Implementation** A heated discussion arose regarding the implementation of an exit interview policy. Council members disagreed on several key aspects of the proposal. The primary points of contention included whether exit interviews should be mandatory for departing employees, how collected data should be managed and protected, and whether the Human Resources department should conduct the interviews independently to maintain neutrality and ensure unbiased responses from departing staff members. ## Legal Bills Review Services The committee discussed a proposed contract with Wayne Basconi for legal bill review services under Mayor's Executive Order 2008-3. [timestamp: 00:07:25] **Key Discussion Points** The committee examined the three-year term of the proposed contract and raised concerns about this duration. Questions were also raised regarding the lack of in-house expertise for legal bill review services, which formed part of the rationale for engaging an external contractor. Committee members discussed the potential for cost savings through the contract, weighing this benefit against the concerns about outsourcing the function rather than developing internal capacity. **Speakers** The discussion involved committee members Crosbie, Sweeney, Beard, and Martin. **Outcome** The committee approved the contract with Wayne Basconi for legal bill review services and recommended that it be sent to the full council for consideration. ## Exit Interviews Council Member Myers introduced a proposal to implement formal exit interviews across departments as a strategy to reduce turnover and improve employee retention. [timestamp: 00:55:48] The committee discussed several key elements of the proposed exit interview program, including best practices for conducting interviews, methods for collecting and managing data, and the role of the Human Resources department in overseeing the initiative. Key participants in the discussion included Scheuniger, Jarvis, Lawless, and Henson, alongside Myers. To advance the proposal, the committee established a work group tasked with developing the necessary infrastructure for the program. The work group's responsibilities include drafting a formal exit interview policy, creating survey templates to standardize data collection across departments, and establishing procedures for managing and analyzing the resulting data. The proposal was approved by the committee. ## Purchasing, Procurement & Professional Services Council Member Crosbie proposed tabling this agenda item, citing the complexity and volume of information involved [timestamp: 00:02:03]. Rather than postpone the matter, the committee took an alternative approach. The committee approved the creation of a work group to examine procurement processes. This work group was given a broad charge to review the entire procurement system, rather than focusing on a single component of the process. Key participants in this discussion included Council Member Crosbie and Sweeney. The outcome was approved. ## Update on Committee Items [timestamp: 01:35:06] The committee discussed the status of previously tabled items during this agenda segment. Key speakers Blues and Myers addressed several matters requiring committee attention. A primary focus of the discussion was the need to restore item N to the full council agenda. The committee determined that this item, which had been previously tabled, should be returned for consideration by the full council. The committee also confirmed scheduling decisions regarding the Inter-Governmental Committee. It was established that the Inter-Governmental Committee would not convene in May and would instead reconvene on June 15. The committee approved these updates and decisions. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed: Motion to create a work group to examine purchases, procurement, and professional services contracts - **Motion** — passed: Motion to restore item N to the full council as a new business item - **Motion** — passed: Motion to create a work group to advance exit interview policy and related surveys --- ## Full transcript Music Thank you. Thank you. All right, committee members, we've got our quorum, if we count Councilmember Blues, who's headed forward. So we'll get started. And welcome to the Intergovernmental Committee meeting of April the 13th. We have three items on our agenda for discussion today. The item that is listed as item number three, Council Member Crosby and I had a discussion yesterday afternoon about that. And, Council Member Crosby, I have Brian Markham present here if you want to talk about what it is your proposal is on item number three. I was just proposing, as many of you all know, you probably got this book of a packet on Thursday of last week. And after, I had already started researching this quite a bit, but after going through what was submitted to us to discuss this item, on top of trying to compare it to other procurement processes across, if we want to look at other cities, I mean, we're running into everything is just as thick and as much research for each different thing we would look at to compare it to. So my thoughts were, since it's so much information, I don't think I would doubt that anybody here probably could become an expert from Thursday to today to be able to discuss this. So I was going to suggest that maybe we kind of table this and perhaps look at it in more of a smaller group or a task force or whatever pleases the committee we can create. But I just think there's just entirely too much, and it's too important. It came out of some questions. I moved this to committee because it came out of some questions regarding some of the sole provider contracts. And then during that discussion, we also learned from our commissioner of law that council never formally adopted guidelines. But we have since found out that those are out of the CAO's office, and we do not have to approve those. But these were also, I think, adopted, and maybe you can correct me, back in the 70s. So they may be some. Go ahead. Sorry. We believe that they were adopted in a committee like this before they maybe took minutes. We're not sure. I talked to Dan a little bit about it, my predecessor, and he felt like they were voted on just as a consent, but it was never formally an approval or resolution or anything. And it also probably would have been many years ago. So there's probably some new best practices and some things that we could possibly look at. I just don't see us being able to accomplish too much of that in this structure today, given just the inordinate amount of information. So I guess I can formally make a motion that we table this until maybe after budget. I'm trying to August, if you want me to put a timeline on it. Well, you said two different things. You talked about tabling, and then you talked about a committee. Yeah, well, that could be the next motion. Or we could just create a task force if you want and then report out. In the presence of a subcommittee, you don't need to table the item. They just carry that item forward. I was going to just table it. When I talked to you, I was just going to table it. But we can go ahead and I'm not opposed to creating a working committee for this, if that pleases the committee. So I'll withdraw that motion, and I'll make a motion that we create a work group to look at the purchases, procurement, and professional services contracts. So moved. There's a motion and a second to create a work group subcommittee to look at item number three. Are there any questions? I have a question. will the purpose of the work group just deal specifically with the reason why it came to committee or deal with the entire process? Because I know it had to do with the component of the restructuring, and it was a component of that resolution. I would think that it wouldn't deal with the entire process. I don't know that you can necessarily look at just one specific thing when there's so much regarding. I mean, this is a huge process, and I don't think you can just pull out one thing necessarily dealing with this specifically. I think we have to look at the whole thing. Okay. So that would be the charge of the committee. Okay. Any other questions? All right. All in favor, say aye. Any opposed? Okay. That's great. And what I will do is I'm thinking a group of three. So if there are three people that would like to volunteer to be part of this work group, please come forward and let me know during the meeting, after the meeting, whatever. Okay. Thank you. And Brian, we'll hope that you'll be part of that group very actively engaged in it. Welcome the opportunity. Thank you so much. Thanks for being here. Thanks. All right, Council Member Crosby, you also have the next item, which is listed first on the agenda, and that's the legal bills review services. Do you want to talk a little bit about how this came to be in committee and the information that we have in our packet? Yes. I just noticed that we were in a council meeting, and we had a proposal or a contract to hire an outside attorney to review what other outside attorneys might be doing for us. At the time, I asked several questions, and it didn't appear that anybody really could answer them during that meeting. And so rather than move forward with it, I thought we should probably deal with it more in a committee situation. I don't know if you want to comment on this, but some of the concerns I had at the time, while I do see value in reviewing, especially how legal bill is over $100,000, I also had questions regarding will we get billed for the work that they're doing to justify their legal bills to the city. I was told this was a best practice. I understand that it is with a lot of Fortune 500 companies and that it's also heavily written about in legal journals, but they weren't really able to cite too many governments that did that, and so I don't know if you're able to provide more information to us about governments actually doing this. And then my third issue was do we not have anybody capable in the law department to review legal bills over $100,000? because based on, and this is not anything, I mean, I don't even know who the contract was about that we were voting on, but it seems to me that with like the Fortune 500 companies that do this or Fortune 50 companies that do it, they often hire people with expertise in the area that they're reviewing and know what the standards should be, and it looked like to me that we were just hiring somebody overall So they could be doing legal bill reviews in, you know, water quality or solid waste and not necessarily specialized in one area, and they're not necessarily an expert in what they might be reviewing. So I'll throw all that out there. Okay. Thank you. Tom Sweeney from Risk Management joining us. Thank you. Thank you. Well, to take question number one, as far as it being a best practice, Yes, it is. My experience is in the insurance industry. I've been 40 years in it. And regularly the insurance companies will either bring someone in-house, hire someone in-house, or have an outside vendor do the review of the bills. The question on doing this in-house, I believe in the troubled economic times we have had in the law department, one director and several attorneys gone, which have not been replaced. The kind of losses that we are looking at are specialty kinds of losses. One is dealing with wage and hour claims. And these are not the kinds of expertise that a government or most law departments would have. It's a very specialized area. As far as the individual that was hired, the reason they were hired or chosen in the selection process, rather, was that they had experience with an oil company and a coal company on very specialized areas that we are now dealing with in Wage and Hour and some other areas that are so specialized that the law department does not have experts in that area. So, I mean, the answer to your question would be that individual does have the expertise. their resume showed that they have the rest of them. Could they possibly be reviewing the other, I mean, it almost appears that we're hiring one person based on one certain set of circumstances when, in fact, I believe this was a multiple year contract that we were getting involved with and we were also offering incentives based on recovery if there was performance. And that was the other issue I had, too, was should we be offering incentives as government, cash incentives basically for recovery, or would it not be more reasonable to pay an hourly rate like we pay our other attorneys? Well, the simple answer to that question is that all the national vendors that we took to look at that were experts in this area, charged a percentage of the bill with no guarantees of saving, none. They charged somewhere between 4 and 6 percent of the bill. And we do not feel that this gave us the best advantage. So we asked for either a low hourly or a percentage of savings to where we would get the majority of the savings and the individual would get a small percentage. This gave some incentive to the individual to try to save something if there was something that was reasonably that could be saved on these bills. So as So, as an example, I mean, in these $100,000 bills, in doing some simple math, if a savings were $2,000, the normal bill would be somewhere between $750 and $900 at the current rate of $75 an hour. And with the savings, it would only cost us $1,140. We would realize $1,760 in savings. Therefore, we would get $620. We would pay for the entire process plus receive $620. So we felt that it was in the best economic interest of the government to do it this way. When you bid out contracts to law firms, do you put specifications in there like there has to be this level of attorney or an attorney, not somebody who works for them doing the research and them being able to bill at that rate, their rate, or our rate, I guess, whatever that hourly rate is, when in fact an attorney may not be doing the work towards the bill. Is there any guidelines in our bids regarding that? Well, yes, it had to be an attorney that bid on the process. There was no. No, my question is, could a paralegal be doing work for a law firm and then billing us at $75 an hour? I'm getting a yes in the back. So could a paralegal be doing some of the work and billing us at the attorney rate? No. No, they will not. It is one person, one attorney doing the work. That's all. There's no paralegals. No, and I'm not sure if I'm phrasing this correct. I'm trying to think of a firm. If you go to XYZ firm downtown and you hire them to take on one of these big cases, it's going to be over $100,000, and their hourly rate or what we agree to pay them is $75, is that the billable rate for anybody who does work on the case or can it be, I guess would be the question, Can it be billed at that rate? And then do we put in our contract specifications for who's allowed to do work on certain cases? Yes, we do. On hiring the attorneys, we put a specification in there for what the senior attorneys are, what the associates are, their rates, and what the paralegals charge, and what the secretaries charge, if there is one. So those are all separated out. And then do you also put in there reasonable expectations for time limits and things like that for work done on certain cases, or are you going to try and recover that through this other process? It's not done on the front end, or do you do some guidelines on the front end? No, there are no guidelines. I mean, it's the attorney's going to charge what the attorney is going to charge. I talked to someone in the state asking them about what they do, and this was some of the questioning that they gave because they sometimes specify on the front end what a reasonable amount of time is to be spending on things. So I was just curious if we did that or not. No. I have done that in the past in the insurance industry. It's called a flat rate fee. You know, you charge so much for depositions, so much for interrogatories, so much for this. Historically, on these large cases, you will not get a quality product if you try to do it that way. I'm going to stop. I know some other council members have some questions. Thank you. Council Member Lollas? Thank you. I was concerned about this, too, for several reasons. Some of these cases that I'm going to guess they may be reviewing are quite lengthy, and we could spend thousands of dollars for them to go through, and then maybe they find one or two billing mistakes and we recoup $2,000 and then they get $650 of it. Meanwhile, we've spent, you know, $75,000 or $100,000 to have them review these. That is not the process. The reviewing are each individual bill. So if we have one bill, say, for $100,000 for a month's worth of work, the average on that is going to be somewhere between 10 and 12 hours to do the work, to report on it to us, and to make recommendations. So it is not a process that is going to take hundreds of thousands of dollars. Well, I mean, like the legal bills on some of these, like the EPA, I think we had outside counsel for a lot of that, or, you know, there are cases that have gone on. I'm thinking of a specific lawsuit with the city. Well, we do not go backwards on these. These are from whenever this process is voted on by the council and crew. It would go from that point forward. We are not going back and reviewing old bills. Okay. And can you give me an example of a billing mistake they might find or an error in billing that they might find? Yes, some things that we were testing this program to see how it worked, and some of the things that were found was that the law firm had two or three attorneys attending one deposition. We only need one attorney. You may need someone else there to aid the attorney, depending on the complexity of it, But you certainly don't need three attorneys. So we took a look at number of staff used. It's even as simple as things that we found that one firm was charging us three different levels of charges for photocopy. And this was costing $5,000 to $6,000 a month. So we got them to come down to one fee, which would save us $1,000. You can also find that in one particular case, there was a difference in opinion on what should have been done when we were preparing for mediation on a case. And the law firm was sending one team to do trial preparation. Well, that wasn't needed when we were heading into mediation could well settle the case. So the law firm was heading in the wrong direction and was charging a large sum. So those are examples of the types of things that this attorney can find. I guess I also, if it's a test program, the concern about entering into a four-year contract with them, and I mean, I have no clue who this person is or this firm. It's nothing, but, you know, just the process of entering into a four-year contract when what I'm hearing from you is this is a test program. We had tested it to see if it was worthwhile before going ahead, just to see what kinds of things could be found, and if this RFP was any good. So, I mean, we took a look at it before we processed it, before we decided to go ahead with it. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Beard. I was just curious about who was going to review the reviewer. Well, that would be the, Logan Askew and myself would be reviewing the reports. We have to make the decisions on whether or not the attorney, the vendor would be negotiating with the law firm or if it would be Logan or myself. And so we'll be taking a look at each and every one of their reports. So then you're doing their job over again? No, I mean, we're reviewing a summary of the... It just sounds like layers of, as we're well noted, four layers of bureaucracy. I at one time had, I don't know how it happened to me, but I was given the duty to review our law firm's bills. And it was Stahl-Kean and Ogden at that point. And they have like, I'm not exaggerating, maybe eight or ten different levels of attorneys, not counting the paralegals and the secretaries. And one of their biggest money makers, of course, is the copying machine. And to sort through all that, you know, you have to actually go up and go face-to-face almost with these people to discuss what the situation is. You can't assume by any means, and I don't think a telephone call, because you wouldn't necessarily get the right person. I would think the attorney, our in-house attorney, whoever it is that is working on the case also would be the best judge, and then would filter that on up the line. and what his recommendations are. Well, in a lot of these cases, there is no in-house attorney because we have conflict of interest. Well, then it would be you or Logan. I mean, there is somebody internally that is handling it. They may not be doing the work, but they still are conscious of what is happening, what the work is and what's going on. Well, you know, I'd like to take credit, but I do not have expertise in a lot of areas of law. And, you know, there is anyone else in the law department. But we can read a summary report by someone that is, that was their job with various industries. And in doing that type of work. I think. But in taking those bills and going over it, I don't think we have the expertise. Mr. Sweeney, I think Commissioner wants to speak a little on that. Council Member Beard, let me, and members of the committee, just a couple of observations. First, there aren't many cases where this bill review is going to apply under the Mayor's executive order, okay? I think I mentioned that the first time that we came up with that, because you'd have to get over that $100,000 threshold. We have two or three instances right now, two of which are cases that have carried over from prior to 2007. One is the Berry case, and the other is the EPA case. In the EPA case, there's a lot of work that's going on that's overseen by Charlie Martin and not the law department. So I'm not, you know, Charlie reviews those and sends them on. Under this executive order, I have to approve every legal bill that's done. But so you will know, you said who's reviewing the reviewer. Well, there aren't going to be all that many different cases where the reviewer is going to be reviewing in any event. A lot of the cases where we are defending a case where we have been sued, our self-insurance fund, which Tom oversees in the law department, the claims area, is responsible for paying those legal costs. And so Tom, for years, has been reviewing those bills. And to the extent that we have an in-house counsel that is overseeing the work of the outside counsel, yes, that is being reviewed. So there is a review there. Somebody said, I think Council Member Crosby said, well, do we have people in-house reviewing those? Well, we do have those. The question is, and I think the mayor's thought in signing the executive orders, when we get to a certain level, it's good to have another set of eyes to review it and sign off on it. Or to the extent that we think there is an issue about the bill, we can take it up. Now, I will tell you, we have had issues with outside council bills before. And Mr. Sweeney's either handled that on his own in certain instances, or I've gotten involved and participated in it too. So we will continue to do our own review and point those things out. I think the idea is when you get to a certain level that it makes sense to have another set of eyes on it. So that's the purpose. But there won't be that many cases where we're spending where we get to that threshold. And as you all know, we're not referring very many cases to outside counsel now. We have some older cases that we've had for a while. Now, I will tell you one where we've exceeded that threshold, and that's with Mr. Parsons on the TIF stuff. So that would be one that we would have reviewed. Okay. Did you have a follow-up? I guess not. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Crosby. I was just going to – first I'll comment. And I think that clearly this is not necessarily what I would consider a bad thing, to have an extra set of eyes. And it's worked in other industries, obviously, and trying to be good stewards of people's money, them being the taxpayers. If there is opportunity to recover or if we are seeing issues with our bills, I mean, that's a good thing. I think my concern comes into why would we get in a three-year contract with somebody who's very specialized and specialize their area of expertise is one area where you mentioned three different cases that are completely different. And then lastly, if you've done a dry run of this, why can't we just line item out of the budget within the division professional services if it's not that much money, is you're saying take it out of your budget, put in professional services, and have them do it where you're not having to come get approval for a three-year contract from us and handle it that way. So you're suggesting, let me see if I understand, what you're suggesting, Council Member Crosby, is that whatever division the professional services has been engaged by would have money in their budget to go out, and to the extent they want to hire somebody to do the review, they would do it. Well, it doesn't appear, like you said, there's only maybe three cases for more currently. I mean, there could be more, but if there's one under, like, the EPA, why wouldn't water quality be able to, if they feel like their billing is excessive and they have somebody who's reviewing everything? I would think if a red flag went off, we have $10,000 worth of copies this month, That's pretty high. Those were the types of cases you were saying you would run into, that why wouldn't they just be able to utilize their professional services instead of us engaging in contracts with people for three years at a time where their expertise may not be in all these different areas that you're suggesting be reviewed. Yeah. I think the idea here is that we're just talking about legal fees and that it would be good if we were going to engage someone in a contract. And it's very possible that the amount this person is going to be paid is not enough under their own professional service to even exceed the $25,000 threshold that we're talking about the council would have to approve. We're bringing it to you because we think it's appropriate. For instance, there's been a couple of instances where we've asked for approval to hire outside counsel on a case where we've had a conflict. Well, I don't know whether it's going to exceed the threshold that you have to approve. I'm just bringing it to you because I think you need to know about it and have it approved. But let me ask Mr. Sweeney one question here. Yes. What is it? 32. Yeah. It's my understanding, and I wasn't involved in the RFP. Tom handled that. But it's my understanding we've got a 30-day termination provision on this contract. So we're not – we've got an out on it if we – I guess I still just don't see the point. I understand the need for maybe doing this, but I still don't quite get why you can't utilize professional service. I mean, why wouldn't you just use what that money is there for to utilize outside resources when you cannot do it within your own division? That's why we budget for it. So it's just a suggestion, even though with a 30-day provision, I just believe that maybe we're getting into long-term contracts with people who may or may not have the expertise in certain areas of law. And like you said, reviewing bills could be very different, and the burden of proof for the work that they've done might be very different for the EPA, TIF, versus sexual assault cases. So thank you. I think one point was that the money does have to come out of the self-insurance fund to pay these, so it doesn't come out of the division's funds. That is why we were doing the contract. Mr. Sweeney, I'm sorry, we're not understanding what you're, what were you saying? Well, I'm saying on several of these cases, except for the environmental quality, I guess, or the EPA, these are litigated cases that have to be paid, the legal bills have to be paid out of the self-insurance fund and not out of the divisions. So they wouldn't be qualified to fall under the professional services of the Division of Law? We have a professional services budget that's $50,000, where if we hire an attorney for whatever reason, for instance, Mr. Enloe, when we were conflicted out and Mr. Enloe helped with the disciplinary proceeding, we're paying Mr. Parsons out of that budget also. That's what that's for. What Tom's talking about is when we are sued and we're defending a case like Barry, then our self-insured fund is responsible for paying any judgments that may be imposed against the government or any settlements that we enter into or any attorney's fees incurred in defending those cases. And so that's actually the fund that he's talking about, the self-insured fund, and that's the fund that Tom oversees. So that's not really in a divisional budget. That's when, what's the clicker for that? What is it that determines that? Is it when we're the defendant in the case? It depends on the case. For instance, we're self-insured on our workers' comp. So on a workers' comp case is up to a certain amount, then our fund would be responsible for paying that in any defense costs that we have. The same thing would be true if we have a property damage case. But the more typical case and the one that you all typically get involved in are the cases where somebody has sued the government or an employee of the government claiming there is some liability. And Barry is an example. There's a trial going on currently in the Crawford case. You might have read about it today in federal court. But it's a case that is being handled out of the – it's a corrections case, but it's being handled out of the self-insurance fund because we've been sued. Okay. All right. Did you have a follow-up? Yeah, but I was going to say, but the EPA and the TIF would not be, correct? Well, we back up, Council Member Crosby, and clarify that. On the fees related to the consent decree, those are being paid out of environmental quality. They're having to be approved by Charlie Martin, Cheryl Taylor, and me currently. Okay. On the TIF, if you all recall, when Mr. Parsons was first engaged a couple of years ago, the law department, we had some discussion with the delegation at the time, as you recall. There was some discussion about maybe using part of the legal professional fees in law and maybe some of the economic development money, and then we decided, no, we're going to take it all out of law. So all of that has been coming out of law's professional services budget. Okay. Any follow- Wait a minute. Does that clarify it, Casey? I'm sorry. They're too different. That's being paid out of our division's professional service budget, not the self-insurance fund because our self-insurance program is not implicated. On the consent decree, that's being paid because it's all related to sanitary sewers and storm sewers. That's being paid out of. I guess I'm just confused because when we started, why would you then take out something that's not, if it goes over $100,000, that's not out of our self-insurance program? why would we be paying for services or a contract with outside council review bills that aren't really appropriate for that self-insurance fund? Does that make sense? Because when you all first started talking, you were talking about these cases, these cases, these cases, And I could understand if it were the Berry, the Crawford, or maybe part of the EPA, but then if you take that part, it may not even be over the $100,000 threshold. It may be the entire case put together. So it sounds to me like we're possibly covering other cases that may not be appropriate to come out of the self-insurance fund to pay for these services just overall in general for whatever case. Right. We would not be able to use any funds out of the self-insurance fund for this or any other purpose unless it fell within the parameters of our self-insurance program. The same would be true with the payment of any funds related to environmental matters that are paid out of dedicated funds that are set up through Commissioner Taylor's shop, for instance, the sewer fee or the stormwater fee or that kind of thing. So those funds can only be used for those purposes. So we're not talking about taking money from one of those funds and reviewing a bill that ought to be paid out of the self-insurance fund. Okay, so like solid waste, that would come out of the solid waste because they have a fee. See, it depends on what the fee is incurred for. If there is a lawsuit that is filed against one of our employees or the government out of a solid waste matter, a solid waste matter, that would be a self-insured fund expense. Now, if solid waste wanted to engage a lawyer to help with putting together regulations or something like that, if that were to happen, that would be something that they would have to pay out of their own budget. Okay. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to confuse it, but there's different funds that would have to be paid out of. Okay. Does anybody need more clarification on that? Because it's my understanding that we now have the issue that came, the item that came that was the impetus for this coming to committee, it still needs to be dealt with. Did we table that item pending this discussion? Yeah, it was table two. Right. So we would probably need, is it your thought, Mr. Sweeney, we'd need some type of action from this committee in order to get that back to the docket? Yes, we would need a motion to take it to council. Okay. Is everybody clear on the piece of legislation we're talking about? It's on page 7 of your packet. It was item N, new business item for, I don't know the date of this docket, of this new business item. It's page 7. Madam Chair? Yes. If I might. Yeah, please. Just a comment. I know you all have expressed some concerns about this, and I will tell you this is, I think, my first experience with a company like this. I do think it's a good idea, given the amount of money, because I think it would be money well spent, and I don't think we're talking about much money. But I will tell you this. I think that if we don't feel that this person is providing good service, or we're not seeing the results that we think we ought to see, then we can terminate this contract. And if you wanted us to report back to you in six months or three months or however long and tell you how it's working, we can do that because we do have that termination provision. And this person does not work unless they receive information from us. So, again, I don't see that many currently that I see going forward that we're going to have this person even engaged in. I mean, that's barring something unforeseen that we don't know about currently. Is the multi-year thing a sticking point for you from the law department? I mean, if that's something that the committee doesn't want to recommend to go forward, if they prefer it not be a multi-year thing, is that something that even the – I wouldn't have a problem with that. You wouldn't have a problem with that. Okay. Well, that opens it up a little bit, if that's a sticking point for anyone, for any motions to come forward. Madam Chair, let me, I know Brian's no longer here. He helped, his shop helped put together the RFP. It would seem like to me if you say three years and you decide you're going to accept one, I don't know why that would be a problem, but we probably need to run that through purchasing and make sure that's okay. But that's fine with us. Okay. That's what the committee chooses to do. Okay. Councilmember Baird. Thank you, Chair. The gentleman who responded to the RFP, how many people did respond? Two people. Two people. Please, Mr. Sweeney, thank you. There were two parties. And the one we have here, Wayne Biscani. He had the best overall background and experience in the corporate world in reviewing the specialized type bills. But maybe not knowledge of the attorney mix here in Lexington. Pardon? Well, you know, it's a fraternity. It's like a medical, it's a professional fraternity, supposedly. And everybody kind of knows what everybody else is doing and in many cases knows the attorneys personally. Well, he has worked in... He's an out-of-towner. I just wondered if that was a problem. Well, he's Versailles, and his wife is in a local law firm, And he has worked in local law firms in the past. So he does know the attorneys. Oh, does he? Yes, sir. Council Member Crosby has a question. Yeah, and this came up not as a response on, it was more a procedural issue, I think, than anything. I think any of us would be asking the same questions if it were Doug Martin, you know, having the contract, if he were in private practice, able to do work with us. I just pulled him out because he's right there. But, yeah. I am in private practice, and I do not work for the city. Yeah, that's what I meant. You are in private practice, but you cannot work with the city. But having an attorney say like, Doug, it would be the same issue coming before us, and I think it's the multiple-year contract. And also that's kind of a sticking point. And the only other question I had was we're required to provide them with software necessary to do this. That was part of the RFP that we will cover the cost of any special software required to generate any specific form of report required by it. Well, that was more for the national type firms that would be part of their bid to put in an electronic-based bill review system type of thing. That is not what the two firms that answered, the two local firms that answered this bid, that is not a part of their bid. We will not have to pay any. Okay, that was one question I had. I didn't know if we would get surprised by some kind of software bill, because that can be rather expensive. I don't even know what it is, but I would imagine it could be expensive. And then we would incur the cost of placement of software that could be utilized, I guess, for. Well, generally that software system, the legal bill review software system, is on a per-case basis and would add to the cost. But this is not the case with these two bidders. They are manually reviewing these bills and will not be using software or any additional costs. Thank you. Council Member Martin. Thank you. I've been sort of following the conversation, and I've practiced for almost 21 years, and I've been in-house and had to review outside legal bills as well. And I think it's important that we do review the outside legal bills. And as Council Member Beard was saying, that we all have to do it when we hire outside counsel. And it's important that they know that we're watching. And particularly with the size of legal bills that come through this building, I think that it's very, very important that we keep eyes. And so from my standpoint, the 30-day out in it is very comforting. And if we have some problems, we can certainly use that. But, you know, everybody's understaffed. I think this is sort of a workaround to be able to fill that function on an as-needed basis. I think we either are going to look at doing things like this or, I guess, providing a legal department and a couple extra staff members. I know they're short of staff. And so I think this is sort of a good short-term compromise until maybe the revenues recover and we can get them back up to a needed level of staffing. And, again, we're only talking about, I think at this time, three cases that fall under this parameter. Yeah, and the types of things that you look at are, you know, like you said, how many attorneys are going to meetings. Are they double and tripling up on you? When you start getting law firms who are taking a partner and one or two associates to court every time and you sit for an hour and a half or two hours, you're talking a couple thousand bucks just to go to court. And so I think it's important to have clear guidelines up front as to what they're allowed to bill for, but also to look on the back end to make sure that they're actually complying with those and that they're not taking 18 hours to research an issue that they already provided a research memo on, for example. So I think it's good that we do get this extra provide. Thank you, Chair. Let me ask you, Councilman Martin, since this is your area of expertise or how you practice the three-year, how do you feel about the three-year term? You know, I guess I'm not that familiar with purchasing through the city, so that may be more a function of the city's. In the outside world, there's not really a term for contracts. You use them until you get tired of using them and use somebody else. And so I've never had a contract that actually had a term. You just would do it. Now, this may be a function of purchasing, of which it's not really my area, and so I'm less familiar with. But the fact that we have a 30-day out is absolutely critical, and I applaud them for having that in there, because what you don't want is a three-year term that you can't get out of. And so, but I'm not offended by three years. I'm not offended by one year, so I'm happy with whatever the committee wants to do in that regard. Okay. So I think they are too, so it sounds like. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Madam Chair, just a short comment on the three-year. The rationale behind that in purchasing and in our process was that you lock in a lower price for a longer period of time to save money. So that was the only rationale. And there is language, I believe, in the RFPs and all the RFPs through purchasing that if it's in our best interest, we can negotiate or change the contract as seen fit. Okay. So I believe we can change it to one year, but that will have to be verified. Well, let me clarify something then. If the 30-day termination out is utilized and someone else is hired in, would they then complete the existing contract, or would they then get a brand-new contract? Could they come in and pick up the contract as it is for the second or third year? If we have to do it again, it would have to go out on an RFP bid again, a new one. Okay. Council Member Blues? Thank you, Madam Chair. I move to send item N back to the full council with a recommendation to restore it to the new business items. Is there a second? There's a motion and a second to restore the item N of the new business and send it back to council. It would come on as a new business item. Is that how you would like to see that? Okay. Is there any discussion about that? Councilmember Beard. Just generally, because I kind of got cut off at the pass by the Councilmember Blues' motion, but what happens on the back end? We've caught whoever in padding the bill, or they took three attorneys rather than, in our opinion, it only should have been one. How do you actually handle that with them? Well, that would be the, we would determine, Logan and myself would have a discussion on that. We would determine who will do the negotiating with the law firms. If we feel that it's in our best interest that Logan or myself do it, we will do that and have done that in one case. And in other cases, if we feel that we've talked to the legal counsel and they're okay with meeting with this other vendor and discussing what their findings were, then we can let them do it. But it's our decision. Okay. If I can, let me, Council Member Beer, just following up on that, So you'll know, we have a pretty good relationship with the outside counsel that we have. And we have several of those. And I will tell you that, and Tom's been at it a long time, and Leslie Bowman, our director of litigation, does a lot of bill review too. But I will tell you, in a lot of instances, when a bill comes in, there's something on there that doesn't look right or we have a question about, they will pick up the phone and they will call, and most of the time it will get worked out and there won't be an issue. Well, other than the fact that it tells me that we don't need an outside review person. It sounds like. Well, we're talking about an item here, an item there, something like that. I mean, I'm just talking about as bills come in. I do think the outside review, I agree with Council Member Martin having been in-house knows. I think it's a good thing, particularly when you get in these sums of money. Good. Okay. Council Member Martin. I was just actually going to say what Commissioner Logan had said, that outside firms bend over backwards to keep contracts of this size. And it's been my experience as both in-house counsel but also working in a large firm, working for corporations, that the client is in a very strong position to negotiate fees. And if we as the client have an objection to something, they will almost always, not always, but frequently bend over backwards to take care of that. But I think what I understand, these are just going to be large cases with a large amount of billings, and due to the limited staff size right now, I think we're going to get a pair of eyes on those. But, you know, typically they, you know, anything that the client wants, the client usually gets, and that's typical in most cases. So thank you, Madam Chair. Sure. We've got a motion and a second to refer item N back to council, a council work session for a new business item. Is there any more discussion on that? All right. All in favor, please say aye. Are there any opposed? We have one opposition, Councilman Revered. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Sweeney. Appreciate it. Thanks, Logan. Next item and last item I'm showing on the agenda is brought forward by Council Member Myers, and the topic is exit interviews. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Madam Chair. First, I want to start by thanking Mr. Scheuniger, Paul Scheuniger, for doing some excellent work here on this topic and kind of give him the microphone for a minute to talk about the process that he went through. as you know, I put this issue in committee because when we look at the docket on Thursday, inevitably, almost every single Thursday, there's at least one, if not three or four, persons from corrections that are separating from government voluntarily. And there's other separations in there, too, but that's the one department or division that seems to have a very high volume of turnover. And then also we had a conversation, I think, Council Member Lawless was talking with the director of E911 about the turnover in that particular department as well. And the conversation came up as to whether or not he had an exit survey that he was conducting when people left. And I think he said that he did interviews, but there was nothing on paper. So nothing survives an interview and nothing's – there's no record of it anyway. So I believe that our government needs to have a policy in place and an exit interview in place. And so Mr. Schoeniger has come up with a couple of different examples from other cities, and I like some of the stuff that they do. And so I'll just kind of turn the floor over to him and let him talk about how he got started, and then I'll take it back. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member. After you referred this to committee, I did two things. I contacted HR to see how they utilize exit interviews, but I also did a little bit of research on what other communities do and what the private sector does regarding exit interviews. And my research appears on pages 11 and 12. And then HR's response is a little bit later in the packet. But the exit interviews, it appears to be done for two reasons. One, the transfer of knowledge when an existing employee is leaving their work, how that's going to be transferred to another employee or how that's going to be sourced out. But probably more importantly, that exiting employee probably is more apt to provide the employer or representative of the employer more unbiased, unfiltered information about what their feelings are about the organization, why they left? Is there anything that can change to make them stay if, in fact, the employer wants the employee to stay? That type of information. As the memo indicated, several public sector organizations use exit interviews. I think I cited Minneapolis, and I think they've included some information for Minneapolis. But there's other organizations that use it as well, including the province of Nova Scotia. I'm not sure why that kept showing up. But I think that's the extent of what I found, at least externally, internally. And Ms. Jarvis is here, but I asked her to get some information how we're using exit interviews, if we are, in fact, using them, and how they would be compiled and how they'd be stored. because I think the custody issue is probably as important as well. And Leslie's here, but she basically indicated that two of her generalists indicated that they do use exit interviews, but more importantly, Leslie indicated that they have proposed utilizing the exit interview procedure into a proposed work program that hasn't yet been implemented, but Lester can probably address that as well. I did not get any information from HR about what divisions were using exit interviews and how they're using them, but I think Lester can address that as well. Okay. I'm happy to address any questions you or your colleagues would have. Okay, thank you. Madam Chair, may I continue? Thank you. If you look at the first page of the memo that is addressed to me, it's on page 11 of our packet. The third paragraph down, it says, According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, CIPD, the cost of replacing an employee ranges from 29 to 46 percent of the person's annual salary. As such, organizations should take a keen interest in why their staff leave. That's a huge number, basically 30 to 45 percent of the annual salary is what it takes every time somebody leaves. And that's the impact on our budget. So the second page, the top on page 12, the last sentence in the first paragraph says, finally, exit interviews provide direct indications as to how to improve staff retention. So when you look at this research, you have, I guess, three different things that I see that came out that are very interesting to me. And one is the exit survey itself and the fact that that's done preferably face-to-face. But I noticed that one of the examples here in Minneapolis, City of Minneapolis, not only do they do the face-to-face exit interview, But they also, the employees asked to complete the online exit survey as well, so the data can be captured about the employee's experience working with the city. I think that would be a good thing for us to do, too, is both have the verbal exit interview that's done face-to-face where information is captured on paper, but also have that employee do the electronic version so that we can use that electronic data to begin to quantify trends and things like that. I'm going to have Ms. Jarvis come up in a minute. Another thing that is not mentioned here that I know when I worked for the state and the company I work for now and some other companies I've worked for, they actually have an employee satisfaction survey. I don't remember, I could be wrong, but I don't remember ever doing one when I was a council aide in the three years I was on staff at the city. But I think besides just looking at what employees are saying when they're leaving us, if we talk to our employees that are staying, we can get some keen insight onto what we can improve upon so that they don't get to that point where they reach breaking point and finally leave. And I would suggest that this economy has probably deterred some people from leaving that otherwise would leave. And so we need to find out, you know, how we can make life better for them as well. And then third, in Minneapolis, they also use a job comparison survey that they send out to the employees that separated willingly or voluntarily within 60 days of separation. And that survey is completed so that that employee looks at their new employer and then gives us feedback as to what attracted them to the new employer, what they like about that new employee-employer relationship that maybe if some of those things were in place here, they wouldn't have separated. So those are three things. The exit survey, employee satisfaction survey, job comparison survey are all things that I want to see as an outcome that we implement government-wide. And then if you could come on up, Ms. Jarvis. One thing I found interesting in Mr. Schoeniger's first memo was the statement that only a few people responded to you when you put out the call for division directors to give you the information as to whether or not they're using an excellent survey and what that instrument looks like and what they do with the data that they collect. I'm disturbed that only a few divisions bothered to respond to you. Let me clarify that statement. What I did was went to those individuals in human resources occupying the positions of generalists, and I asked them whether their client groups were utilizing an exit interview, and they responded back to me. The only response that I received was, here's the divisions that are doing exit interviews. what response they received from divisions on whether they did or did not respond, I do not know. But the only response that I received back was that two divisions do have a form where they try to sit down and meet with the employees, but they didn't communicate a formal process for what they do with that information once they've collected it. Okay. As a follow-up, because obviously we're not going to put this to rest today, could you send a memo to all directors and CC all commissioners? asking them if they do an exit interview, what instrument they use, how they conduct it, do they do it face-to-face, is it just a written survey that they're handed out, do they do it online, et cetera. Then also who in particular initiates that, not initiates that, but who conducts that interview. This literature that we have strongly suggests that to have an independent person from HR conduct that interview is much better than that person's immediate supervisor or a peer. And then also, I guess you have the memo states that you have a formal policy regarding exit interviews, or you're saying that a formal policy should be adopted and developed. Can you talk a little bit about the workflow that you have? And then also I'll say, too, that I think another piece that's very important to this is that the, I don't know if it would be the CAO in our government or whom it would be in the administration, but someone needs to be responsible for compiling this data on a regular basis. And I think I'd like to even see a threshold put in place so that divisions or departments that have a certain percentage of turnover, their data be looked at more. frequently than others who don't have very much turnover, so that we can start to ascertain what's going on and see what kind of changes we can make. So at that, I'll kind of turn the floor over to you and talk about what you found. It would be nice. Did you get any actual templates from those two that responded? The only exit interview form that I have seen is the Division of Community Corrections. They use a form. The other division police, I did not see their form. FIRE communicated that they do something informally if the employee chooses to, but there wasn't an actual form that I saw. So the only form that I have viewed is the one from corrections. And do you have a copy of it? Not the one from corrections, no. Okay. Didn't bring any forms. When you get a chance, can you email that to me, or you can send it to all of us if you want to, but I'd like to take a look at that one. Mm-hmm. And then I'll turn it over to you to talk about your workflow. Okay. The Division of Human Resources a few months ago started looking at various workflows, and it wasn't a workflow necessarily on exit interviews, but where this one came up was in our process for employees who are leaving government, whether they be leaving government through a termination, a resignation, a retirement, because many times what happens is an employee can resign in the division, and it could be two or three weeks before the human resources area receives the paperwork. So we were looking at it from several different angles, how to streamline that process, how to put procedures in place so that we were, from a security standpoint, taking their ID badges and so forth. We were getting their final pay calculated, taking care of COBRA notification and benefits. So we were looking at it from several angles. And during that process, the exit interview did come up as something that we need to investigate and look into. So in our draft proposal of that workflow of people exiting government, we did incorporate the idea of an exit interview needing to be part of that. And Paul had asked for that, and I did bring copies of that, if you would like those now. Please. So it might understand that you don't have a draft of a survey. You just have a draft of the workflow that includes that as something that needs to be done. What's attached here is a draft, a workflow. And, again, we are still looking at some of our processes, so this workflow is just a draft. So then through the PeopleSoft system has automated some of the steps that we'll be able to take. That's attached. Some exit interview sample questions, and then we did a rough draft of a form that's attached to this packet as well. Okay. What is your timeline for implementing the exit? I guess maybe the whole workflow. Is it because you want to do it all at once, or is it something that you could go ahead and implement in terms of the exit survey? There would need to be some thought put in the implementation as far as the form, how we would go about, like you said, would it be a face-to-face interview, who would conduct that, how would we be notified, would we mail it. So there's several pieces that we would need to consider. But I think in looking through this and what we were looking at as a committee when we were putting together the workflow, is the most important piece is we have to make a commitment that we're going to do something with the data because the data is only so good if you, you know, first of all, you have to be willing for the feedback and then to do something with the feedback you receive. Okay. We're going to help you with that. So I guess from this point moving forward, what I'd like to do, I don't know if we need to put together a work group to kind of do it on the side, but I want this body here to be involved in at least trying to come up with a draft for a survey. And obviously you guys are the experts in HR, but I don't think it's rocket science on what questions we want to ask to get the information about why people are leaving. And then, so I wanted to have a work group work on the exit survey and the job comparison survey, and then also a policy around those and a policy about what we do with that data when we collect it, you know, where it goes, where I imagine that would go to HR. But then how do we pull information out of there and guard the confidentiality of the people who gave us those answers? But then also can you speak to whether or not our government currently has, and this is kind of off the cuff for you so I don't know if you have an answer, but an employee satisfaction survey that we do on at least an annual basis, if not a semi-annual basis. In human resources, my only involvement with the employee satisfaction survey is by the invitation of divisions, we have stepped in and done an employee satisfaction survey and provided that information back to the division. We did that with the 9-1-1, enhanced 9-1-1. And I'm trying to think of other divisions, but we have only done that by an invitation only to the division. But we did have a form that we mailed to every employee, and then they mailed it back to Human Resources, and we compiled the information so that it would be anonymous. And then we presented it back to the division. Okay, thank you. And I'm going to yield the floor back to the chair. We have several council members that wish to speak, so I'm going to just go down the list here. Council Member Beard. Actually, it doesn't involve you as much as it does everybody else up here. I have some experience also with satisfactory surveys, and it is best to have an outside entity actually put together the results as opposed to it's so that everything is blind to management and you'll get truer, more accurate information from the employee if it's totally neutered and names aren't used, only numbers, and there's a compilation of information that will come back to you from the outside entity. that you can take action on because the numbers will hold up as far as that's concerned. It's tricky. It can be tricky. You can't do them every six months or whatever. It's every two years or three years kind of an operation. But it is a good idea to do at some point. And I'm talking about government-wide, not just a smaller department. I think with a smaller department, you get some reticence of people thinking that it will cost them in the long run to tell the truth, or what they feel is the truth anyway. And on this, this whole question, is the police and fire, are they included in, would they be included in this, what's your exit interview process? Absolutely, every employee would be. I mean, it's voluntary. You can't force the employee to do it, so it's not going to be an issue with their contract. Okay. Well, that's where I was headed. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Lawless is next. I agree 100% with Council Member Myers. I think that our employees are one of our greatest assets. They're one of our greatest expenses, but they're also our greatest assets. And I think certainly divisions where there is a high turnover or there could be problems. And we can spend a lot of money on software and all that, or we could do something like SurveyMonkey, which is free and gives you the information, compiles it for you, and it could be done anonymously. But I think that certainly employees having an opportunity to do that and who are currently here, not just after they leave, would give a lot of information that would be helpful to the management and efficient management of our government and of the services. So I would strongly suggest that we implement something like that So we can spend a whole lot more money on software that may or may not work for however long. Or we can use a free service online. I think you can ask up to 20 questions on SurveyMonkey, and they compile the information and spit it back to you. So they also do 360 reviews. and so I don't see this as something that, you know, is going to take a whole lot to implement. And so I would like to see us do that. And I'd also like to see exit interviews and, again, using some online service like that that's free so that the employee doesn't have to feel like, oh, if I say these things when I'm leaving, then I won't get a good reference, you know, that we'll just get that information and it, you know, it will be clean and nobody will be intervening or interfering or whatever. I was, and you're right, when I was talking to Mr. Lucas the first time and then again in a private conversation, I was under the impression that they had documented exit interviews. And I just think, you know, as someone who managed people for many, many years, this kind of thing as well as what's going on. Are you satisfied with your job now? what would you need to do to do it better, those kinds of things would be extremely valuable for us to have as a government or as any entity that has employees. So thank you. Thank you, Council Member Lawless. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. Lastly, thank you for being here. I have particularly been watching the turnover in community corrections, and I addressed that with Ron Bishop, and he talked about, he had sent me a letter in detail of things that he was putting in place for the hiring process. So do you all play a very big role in hiring community corrections officers or police, fire, E-9-1? So you do the same process with those divisions as you do across government? Their processes are slightly different in that there's typically a written test. There's more procedures that they'll go through in their hiring process than, say, a staff assistant in a division. So there is some differences in the hiring process, but yes, we are involved in them. Okay, good. because I also think it's very important to look at why people have left so that we could put things in place to reduce that turnover. I do not, I know on the mayor's information reports, I don't see a lot of the E911, is that, what's that title? Job title? Yes. It could be a call taker, a dispatcher, a telecommunicator. I've probably seen telecommunicator, but maybe I don't think I've seen any of the others. It's possible. But I know last week there were four or five community corrections. Yes. And we went without getting any information from the mayor for a few months, and I requested that that be placed back on our dockets. And so last week there were four. And I just think that is extremely costly, and I think we should put everything we can in place. And I'm glad that Council Member Myers brought this forward, but we should put everything in place to find out why they're leaving. Is it the hiring process? Are we hiring the wrong kinds of folks? Because it's obvious E911 and community corrections have to be very, very difficult jobs. But we need to find out where the problems lie. So thank you. Council Member Blues. Thank you, Madam Chair. Ms. Jarvis, just a couple of questions. In your experience, what's the participation rate in exit interviews, voluntary exit interviews or questionnaires? Well, I think that obviously the face-to-face will be better. Again, it's a voluntary. If you're choosing to mail it or send it via providing the postage, it's going to increase your success rate. I think it would be appropriate if you were looking at least 25% of your employees providing feedback, then that would be a goal to start with, of getting at least a fourth of your population who exits to provide you feedback. Is it, in your view, at all feasible or advisable to make an exit interview or questionnaire a condition of employment? say, for any new hires starting at some future date. Does that make any sense at all? It does. And is that a practice that some entities might have in place? There are some entities that put in place stipulations for exiting, looking at if you're voluntary leaving, you must give a proper notice for payouts. But again, those would need to be things that are announced to the employee when we're doing the initial hire offer. But making those requests to the employee at the time of hire that we will require a certain notice for resignation, whether it be a two-week notice, a one-month notice, and then what stipulations surround that if you don't give us proper notice. I think that maybe that's something we want to look at, because if we put some serious stock in exit interviews, then I think we'd want to do as much as we can feasibly do to get a comprehensive response. And then a question regarding number three on page 12 of our packet. This is in Paul's memo to Council Member Myers. The recommendation that the interview should be conducted by a neutral party who is trained in interview techniques and understands the role of an interviewer. Would that necessitate, in your view, itself a new hire, or are there those already in place in government, in HR, say, who would be able to perform that function and fit those criteria? I think we have people who would fit that criteria. The important thing, talking about the neutral party, and the same thing was said with concerning satisfaction surveys, is sometimes people, if they're stepping out of, away from their manager, away from their supervisor, they'll be more apt to give an honest feedback, or if they can mail the survey in as opposed to talking to someone after the fact, if here was my experiences in the workplace. But also to realize that an exit interview is not the time to guide the person down a path of what we want them to say, that we're just providing a basic set of questions and then know if we are going to probe for more information, that we're taking them down an appropriate path, that we don't want to guide them down a certain path to give us information that we think that we're wanting to slant it toward that everybody's leaving here because of salaries or because of management or because of organizational change, but allowing them to provide the information that they truly feel. And one final question. Might it make sense if we adopt such a policy to base an exit interview on responses to a written questionnaire? Meaning should it be a written? Well, no, I'm saying that let's say that we set up a system by which the departing employee responds to a questionnaire in writing, and then the interview was a follow-up face-to-face with the employee. but based upon the responses to the questionnaire, what I'm thinking is that a proficient interviewer could perhaps ask questions based on incomplete or beguiling or interesting responses that could, you know, help bring greater clarity to the, you know, to the reasons for the employee's departure. That's all. Yes, it would be. What you would do at the end of the survey form, or the same thing with an employee satisfaction survey, is to always say sign your name here or check the box if you are willing for us to contact you and ask for further clarification. And that gives us the permission to know. As it currently stands, when we do receive resignation letters in human resources, that lead us to believe the person left because of a dissatisfaction in the workplace, we do contact them in writing and ask them if they're willing to come in and provide us more specifics. Sometimes people do and sometimes they don't. But it's always best, once you have that written document, to say, may we contact you again if we want further clarification on this, and get their permission in advance to do that. Thank you very much. And, Council Member Myers, I think that, you know, as we go forward with this, we might consider these possibilities of an exit procedure as a condition of employment, and then working out exactly what that procedure is, the relationship between the written and the oral discussion. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. You're welcome. Council Member Myers is next on the list. And before you speak, if you could talk about it. I do support the idea of a work group and have two things I want to see if you can address, whether they should be part of the work group in your opinion or not from your research and Paul's research and your thoughts. But the dollars, the cost you talked about, that higher overturn of employees does cost money. And the percentage that was here, for an example, I wondered if we have any way to hear urban county government drill down on those numbers and show that because that would help us to make sure that we follow through with this. And also, who gets the data once it's received? And does council even have a role in that more of an administrative process if you'll address those? Okay. Thank you. I guess I would love to see our numbers drill down into, you know, the CIPD group that did this analysis. I don't know if they could be contracted to do that with us. I don't know if that's something that HR, if we have in-house expertise to do something like that. But I think it would be fantastic because then whatever dollars we put towards this, we understand our return on investment. So, yes, I'd like to see that be a part of the work group. And then your second piece was who gets the data and what's done with it. That's a great question, and I think what I'd like to do is do some research in other governments and other private sector entities, who gets that information and what they do with it. But obviously if we gather the information and we don't compile it, analyze it, and do something with it, then we've wasted our time and the time of those employees that are separating. So we definitely don't want to do that. And that was why that was one of the four points that I had on here, that the outcome is we do put together a policy in place for that situation. Dr. Blues asked the question about tying this to condition of employment. And I was out, I don't know if you saw me talking to Commissioner Askew earlier before this came up. That's exactly what I was asking him. And so he said that Ms. George would be the better person to ask that question. but probably, could you come to the microphone, please? Probably not. Oh, I didn't know you were on crutches. I'm sorry. Is there a wireless mic there that we could? I didn't see your crutches. I'm sorry. I don't think that we can do it. Here's what my question was. We have a final payout check, But then we also have a sick check and some other monies that are paid out at separation. So my question to the commissioner was whether or not we could tie this exit survey or exit interview to those dollars. He said he wasn't sure about that to ask Ms. George, but thought probably would have to be something we do going forward with an expectation on new hires. Does your mic work? Yes. Okay. And that's correct. In fact, it could be something that we do going forward for new hires and making it a condition of employment, but we wouldn't be able to do that for employees who are currently here who decide to leave. Okay. Thank you. And then secondly, I want to read a couple more things in the information that we have. On page 13, I thought this was really interesting. The letter C at the very bottom, it says, if an employee agrees to a face-to-face exit interview, which I do want to clear up that that is a written interview as well. I mean, it's an oral face-to-face, but they're actually recording the information down on paper. They also are asked to complete the online exit survey. And then let me read something from page 20 in your packet. The second paragraph down, it says, Research has shown that a structured exit interview process is a way to provide better information as to why people are leaving and determine if there are any trends that may expose an organization and allow the organization to make some positive changes. Next paragraph, as important as the questions themselves, it's equally important how the exit interview is done and who performs it. Ideally, when an employee announces that he or she is leaving the organization, whether they are leaving the government or transferring to another department, arrangements should be made to have someone in Human Resources do the face-to-face exit interview. So I think that's key to have someone in HR do it as a neutral third party. But also, I think that by doing the face-to-face interview and then encouraging that exiting employee to do the online survey, What that does is if I separate and I'm concerned about one or two questions that I'm asked by the person in HR and how that might follow me in the future, then I may answer those questions one way. But then when I have the opportunity to go out and anonymously fill out the survey online, I'll be more forthright in the way I answer those two questions online. And I think that's the key to it is to capture both of those pieces of information separately. Survey Monkey is a great way to do it. In the company that I work for now, what we do is we get an email with a link in it, and we go to that link, and then we fill out the survey, and it's done. This is the employee satisfaction survey I'm talking about now, so that they don't know who the employees are that put the information in there. And then it's compiled. I don't know what my company does with it. When I worked for the state, I was a director, and the secretary, the cabinet secretary, came back to me and said, these are the results of your office's employee satisfaction survey, and what are you going to do about this, this, and this? And so I had no idea who it was that filled out the information, but I was responsible and accountable for making changes so that the next year's survey didn't necessarily look like that. And I was only there 13 months. I filled out two of them, so I don't know if that was, they just did it at the beginning of the year, but I know they did it at least once a year, and it was, again, done by that outside agency, like you said. It keeps it anonymous. But I think once a year is a good fit. So with that, if there's no more questions. I don't see anyone else here to speak. Do you have a recommendation, motion? Go ahead. I move that we create a work group to further advance this issue. And I'm not sure. I think part of one of your questions was who should be involved in that work group. No, I didn't have that question. Okay. I would like it just to be a work group of this body, and then we report out. Of course, we'll be working with HR on it, and we'll come back with some things to look at to move forward with. Okay. There's a motion. Is there a second? Second. Okay. We've got two seconds and a motion. Any discussion about the work group? Councilman Rolales? Because of a situation I got into with a work group, which we have many of, and they're not public. They don't require public, you know, we get together and work. And then all of a sudden there was one work group that I belonged to that had to be public meetings and et cetera. and there was quite a hoorah about it. So I think we need to be real clear about that with law before we move into it. Thank you. Okay, we'll clarify with law any process of any open meetings that need to exist, and we'll follow the recommended protocol from law. Thank you. Yes, I did too, but it seems that the glitch, but there was a glitch there for some reason. Okay, we'll do everything we can to follow the recommendations of our division of law. Any more discussion on that? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. None opposed. And that moves forward. Thank you, Ms. Jarvis. Appreciate it. Any other discussion on any other items? Just a note for your calendar. Intergov does not meet in the month of May due to some other meetings that are going on, I guess some trips away or some group meetings or something, I'm not sure. So we won't meet again until June the 15th. So hopefully I'll still see you all around, but we'll have a month off from the Intergov. In the meantime, if there are any items that are on the to-be-discussed list and you'd like to give us an update on that, just contact Paul or myself. and we'll try to have a full agenda on June the 15th because that might be our last meeting for this session. I don't think we have one in July. So June 15th is do or die for that one. So we'll try to have a full session then. Thank you all very much. And a motion to adjourn. Oh yeah, but we'll be back in August. Yeah. Okay. Motion and a second to adjourn. Any opposed? All in favor? Okay. Let's go. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Baby, look at me And tell me what you see You ain't see the best of me yet Give me time, I'll make you forget the rest I got more to leave And you can set it free I can catch the moon in my hand Don't you know who I am? Remember my name I'm gonna live forever I'm gonna learn how to fly I've been coming together People will see me and cry I'm gonna make you to heaven Light up the sky like a flame I'm gonna live forever Baby, remember my name Remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember Baby, hold me tight Cause you can make it right You can shoot me straight to the top Give me love and take all I got to give Baby, I'm a tough Too much is not enough I can ride your heart and it breaks Ooh, I got what it takes Babe, I'm gonna live forever I'm gonna learn how to fly I feel it coming together People will see me and cry Babe, I'm gonna make it to heaven Light up the sky like a flame Baby, I'm gonna live forever Baby, remember my name Remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember Thank you. I'm gonna live forever I'm gonna learn how to fly I feel it coming together People will see me cry I'm gonna make it to heaven Light up the sky like a flame I'm gonna live forever Baby, remember my name Remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember I'm gonna live forever Baby, remember I may I'm gonna live forever I'm gonna learn as a fun I'm gonna get it coming together I remember the 35th sweet device When you put me on the Wolverine up to end and there It was still September when your daddy was quite surprised To find you with the working girls in the county jail I was smoking with the boys upstairs When I heard about the whole affair I said, oh no, William and Mary won't do that But I did not think a girl could be so rude And I'm never going back to my old school Oh, the andes Going outside her door Soon they're gonna be in bloom I can't stand her Doing what she did before Living like a gypsy queen In a fairytale Well, I hear the whistle But I can't go on Take her down to Mexico She said, I want love What or how I want to Well, I did not think the girl could be so true And I'm never going back to my old school Thank you. guitar solo Tumbles into the sea That'll be the day I go back to Anaday Tried to warn you A pavuccino and daddy G But I can't seem to get to you Through the US man Well, I hear the whistle But I can't go on Take her down to Mexico She said, oh no What a horrible Well, I did not think The girl could be so cool And I'm never going back To my own School. guitar solo Thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah This is me. I want to see your face in the morning sun and my energy. The love in the back of you and the meaning is my life to me. Come out to the story of morning glory, all about the serpentine. Come out to the story of morning glory, all about the serpentine. Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah Oh yeah, I get to see your face Like a morning sun, they're my energy It's not many times. As I think of your will as one battle with a serpentine pie Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. Surely has not begun, you will end one now with the Serpentine Fire. Surely has not begun, you will end one now with the Serpentine Fire. Gonna tell the story, a morning glory, all about the Serpentine Fire. Tell the story of what they're loving All about the 17th hour I have a lot. I get up in the morning and I see your face, girl You're looking so good, everything's in place Don't you know I could never leave your side, girl Won't you stay here with me and be my pride Don't you know you're my guy, you're just what I like Girl, you're everything, but you know you're my wife The only girl I always needed for so long Oh, oh, she's like a girl Oh, oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, she's like a girl Oh, oh, oh When I look through the pages of a magazine Still your pretty face is the prettiest I've seen Don't you know I only want to be with you No other girl can make me feel the way you do You're my everything She's like a girl She's like a girl She's like a girl Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, she's my girl, my girl Baby, baby, baby, baby, it's all right Oh yeah, it's all the same Let me say it's all right